The Lids

The Lids was a three-piece alternative rock band consisting of Adam Brenner (bass, vocals), Kris Manier (drums, vocals), and Jason Sisk (guitar, vocals). The band was active in the Indianapolis music scene from late 1994 to early 1996.

Formation
The Lids grew from the musical collaboration of long-time friends Kris Manier and Jason Sisk. The immediate precursor of the Lids was a band formed in high school by Sisk and Manier, along with classmate Brian Bowden, called Naked Flood. Naked Flood performed at parties and at a talent competition at the members’ high school, but dissolved after the members graduated.

After graduation, Sisk and Manier met Adam Brenner—who had graduated from the same high school a year before them—through mutual friends. In late 1994, the three decided to form a band; Brenner, who had never played music before, set about learning to play bass. Like many young bands, the newly-formed Lids coalesced by learning covers, but all three members began writing original material almost immediately. In little time, the band had a full set of original songs, and played its first show at the Emerson Theater in October of 1994.

Musical Style
The Lids played an eclectic mélange of musical styles, ranging from grunge (“Wet Dirt”), to punk (“Bleah”), pop rock (“Interactive Goop”), hard rock (“Competition”), metal (“Jay Ell”), art rock (“Rippin’ Off Primus”), funk (“Apple Grass”), new wave (“Leap Before You Look”), space rock (“Can’t Get it Out of My Head”), and rockabilly (“Body”), frequently suffused with the band’s attitude of ironic flippancy. While Brenner proved to be the band’s most prolific songwriter, all three members contributed original material, and the disparate musical influences of the three were reflected in the band’s wide-ranging style. Sisk’s playing was grounded in hard rock and heavy metal, Manier was an acolyte of prog rock drummers like Neil Peart, and Brenner’s varied musical tastes ranged from all forms of rock to hip-hop.

While the Lids’ steadfast refusal to settle into a single, identifiable musical style may have hurt the group’s chances at sustained, large-scale commercial viability beyond their home city (the perennially provincial Indianapolis music scene having never been a particularly effective launching pad for music careers even in the best of circumstances), the band’s musical eclecticism mirrored that of similarly adventurous—and eventually successful—90s artists like Beck, the Flaming Lips, and Sugar Ray. In particular, with early material like “No Pico Sauce,” the Lids were merging hard rock and hip-hop long before such fusions became commonplace, much less fashionable.

All three members of the Lids were capable vocalists and sang on their own material. All three were also at least functionally capable on guitar, bass, and drums, and the group experimented with switching instruments mid-song, though they never developed the practice beyond a single, facetious showcase song (“Disturbing the Peace”).

Live Performances
The Lids—along with like-minded contemporaries Drywall and Siphon, whom the band quickly met and befriended—entered a largely-inert Indianapolis music scene that betrayed little sign of having been reached in any meaningful way by the alternative rock revolution that had swept through popular music in the early 90s. The Indianapolis musical landscape in 1994 was still dominated by the remnants of a lingering 80s hair metal scene, the center of which was the Emerson Theater. The Lids, Siphon, and Drywall—along with other contemporaries like Sohcahtoa, Acid Green, No Flowers, and the Mergrins—represented the spearhead of the alternative displacement of the metal scene in Indianapolis. (The ascendancy of these alternative pioneers was short-lived, as Indianapolis's all-ages music scene was, in short order, largely overtaken by a pervasive wave of younger, aggressively insular punk and hardcore bands.)

The later years of the 90s would see a wider array of musical venues open to local Indianapolis musicians, but as the Lids began playing shows, the Emerson represented the only formal, all-ages venue available in the city. Beyond the Emerson, Indianapolis bands of the era were largely confined to playing one-off, self-promoted shows at community centers, skate shops, lodges, and house parties. It was this grass-roots circuit that the Lids primarily plied for the duration of their career, interspersed with regular appearances at the Emerson.

The Lids’ highest-profile live appearance occurred in 1995 at Sloppypalooza, the annual punk rock festival sponsored by long-time Indianapolis punk stalwarts Sloppy Seconds, held that year at the cavernous Tyndall Armory. 1 The band wore suits, in an effort to “out-punk the punks” (who were apparently not impressed) 2 and were interviewed about the local music scene by a reporter for the Indianapolis News who arrived early and saw only the local bands on the bill, missing the national acts entirely. 3

Smell the Buttocks
The Lids’ first recording, titled—with a bastardized Spinal Tap reference displaying the band’s typical insouciance—Smell the Buttocks, was an 9-song tape recorded in the summer of 1994 in the storage shed of Sisk’s parents’ house on an aging, semi-functioning Fostex 4-track machine. The set was a mix of covers and early Lids originals:

The tape was never commercially reproduced, with distribution limited to dubbed copies the band distributed to friends.
 * 1) Bleah
 * 2) No Pico Sauce
 * 3) Can’t Get it Out of My Head
 * 4) Gratitude (Beastie Boys)
 * 5) Competition
 * 6) Tapping Song
 * 7) Dr. Sweet
 * 8) Mountain Song (Jane’s Addiction)
 * 9) Unbridled Love

Seven Layers of Goodness
The band’s next recording was a more professional endeavor entitled Seven Layers of Goodness. Seven Layers was recorded in two parts, with the drums recorded at Manier’s parents’ house and the remaining recording completed at 27th Floor Studio in Indianapolis by Mark Leslie. 4 (A live performance of “Unbridled Love,” recorded from the soundboard at the Emerson on April 21, 1995, was included as a bonus track.) This time the set was comprised entirely of originals:

The recording was professionally pressed on manufactured cassettes as Homeskillet Records catalog number HS003.
 * 1) Bleah
 * 2) Jiblet
 * 3) Competition
 * 4) No Pico Sauce
 * 5) Dr. Sweet
 * 6) Wet Dirt
 * 7) Unbridled Love [live]

"Shark E.P."
In the winter of 1995­–1996, the band conducted sessions that resulted in what became known as the “Shark E.P.” (based on the flyer graphic the band had tapped for possible use as the tape’s cover art). The sessions were held in Manier’s parents’ house and were recorded to 8-track reel-to-reel by Sohcahtoa drummer and recording engineer Ben Adrian and Sohcahtoa guitarist Matt Southworth. The songs recorded were:

Mixing of the tape was not completed before the band dissolved, and the only copies remaining are dubs of the rough mix prepared by Adrian. (The disposition of the original multi-tracks is unknown.)
 * 1) Interactive Goop
 * 2) Solid Pulp
 * 3) That One
 * 4) Wet Dirt

Dissolution
In early 1996, Jason Sisk left the Lids for personal reasons unrelated to the band. His last show with the group was at the Emerson on April 6, 1996; he was joined on stage for a number of songs by his replacement in the band, guitarist—and fellow grade-school classmate—Michael Mullins. 5 The band continued with Mullins, for a time under the Lids name, then as the more grunge-orientented Asterisk.

After Mullins was dismissed from the group in May of 1997, Sisk resumed playing with Brenner and Manier as Mr. DNA, a more dedicated grunge and hard rock band that revived none of the Lids’ former repertoire (though “Jay Ell” was included on Mr. DNA’s sole full-length release, Melt Teh Planet).